Many people think the practice of ECT is a thing of the past. Would that it were. This month’s Freedom Magazine exposes gross abuses in the psychiatric industry and the FDA’s negligence in failing to enforce their own regulations requiring ECT machine manufacturers to undertake clinical trials.
And here’s something I was very surprised to read:
“Today, some 200,000 Americans undergo ECT treatments each year, resulting in an estimated $1.8 billion in revenue. The unapproved, so-called “off-label” use of ECT among children—that is, in a manner not specified by the FDA—is widespread.
“The commercialization of psychiatric treatments is a major driver of ECT use: It is much cheaper for health insurance companies, especially HMOs, to pay for electroshock than a multiyear course of antidepressant drugs. That’s one of the arguments in Pushbutton Psychiatry: A History of Electroshock in America, an authoritative 2002 book by Nazareth College political scientist Timothy W. Kneeland and University of Kansas sociologist Carol A.B. Warren.”
The magazine in online at www.freedommag.org and is definitely worth reading.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In